A pedicab ("bicitaxi" in Cuba) with a national flag of the United States is seen in Havana, on January 7, 2015. Last month, the United States announced that it would end decades of estrangement and normalize relations with Cuba. Cuba's nascent private sector is bracing for an influx of visitors should the US embargo ease, but many businesses in the communist country appear unprepared for a torrent of tourists. AFP PHOTO/YAMIL LageYAMIL LAGE/AFP/Getty ImagesYAMIL LAGE/AFP / Getty Images
President Barack Obama has not ended the trade embargo imposed on Cuba by his predecessor Dwight Eisenhower more than 54 years ago, and it is highly unlikely that he will be able to bring about the repeal of the succession of acts of Congress imposing the embargo, in the remaining two years of his presidency.
Yet Mr. Obama has successfully violated an irrational taboo of American politics, with a range of regulatory measures, which have opened up chinks in the armour of the embargo. These changes will prove almost impossible to reverse, and surely will lead to more lowering of barriers.
By contrast, the previous Democratic president, Bill Clinton, had actually tightened the embargo legislation.
Even a moderate Republican such as Jeb Bush, a former governor of Florida (and a prospective presidential candidate), objects to Mr. Obama's loosening of the legislated restrictions. He argues that commercial relations between Cuba and Europe have not altered the tyranny of President Raul Castro, or that of his retired elder brother Fidel before him. That is true as far as it goes.
But the close physical proximity between the United States and Cuba, and the strong ties of kinship between many Cubans and Cuban-Americans are bound to have all sorts of dynamic effects, once most of the numerous, petty obstacles to travel, routine banking transactions and small-to-mid-sized commerce are removed.
Large-scale U.S. investment in Cuba may be difficult for some time to come. The Helms-Burton Act of 1996 requires a transitional government culminating in a democratically elected one, before the embargo is actually lifted.
Eventually, however, it will be difficult to imagine that in 1962 Cuba was the occasion for a conflict between the U.S. and the Soviet Union that almost turned into nuclear war.